bigotry – My Fellow Travelers

Imagine if You Were Powerless

Trigger Warning. I am not sure how to label it beyond that.
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The Trans Community lost a child last week. It’s probably not big news everywhere, it happens so often, but in my corner of the web things have exploded.

On 28 December, 2014, Leelah Alcorn walked in front of an oncoming truck. She was only a few months shy of her eighteenth birthday.

Since then members of the LGBTQ community and their allies have been posting about it on Facebook, Tweeting about it, and writing articles for various websites (such as the link above).

I have seen people label what happened as abuse and negligence, and I have seen people defend her parents as innocent. I am not going to voice my opinion in this article, because that is not what this post is about.

When she decided to leave, she left a message behind in the form of a set of Tumblr posts that were scheduled to post after the fact. Her Tumblr profile is no longer there but the various articles go into detail about what she said.

What has prompted this article however was what I have seen in conversations on Facebook.

I have seen people defend the parents’ innocence, insisting that they were in no way responsible for their child’s suicide.

I have seen people insist that being trans was a mental illness, a delusional disorder. They insisted that the parents were simply doing everything they could. They insisted that it was up to Leelah to dig deeper into her spiritual reserves to find inner strength to persevere just a little while longer.

I have seen people refer to her as delusional, a coward, selfish. They have expressed no sign of empathy or compassion for a child who was so lost that she would take her own life. They only expressed defensiveness because they felt their religion was coming under attack for the role that it played in this child’s death.

They insist that there was no abuse obvious in the stories they have read, or what they have heard from the family, who told CNN that they loved their SON unconditionally, but just couldn’t support THAT religiously.

For the Christians that are out there, that just don’t understand how there could possibly be any abuse in what the family did, or how it could possibly lead to a child’s death, please read on. I present here a thought exercise.

Imagine this:

You were born into a non-Christian family, but you came to know Christ. At a young age, your family found out about it, and forbid you from practicing.

They tell you it is just a phase and will soon pass.

You aren’t Christian, you are just confused.

They love you, but they just can’t accept this part of you.

They don’t let you talk to Christian friends. They look over your shoulder to be sure you aren’t visiting Christian websites. They go as far as to say there is no such thing as a Christian.

Now extend this out to the rest of your life. None of your friends at school, at least the ones you are allowed to talk to are Christian, and they either blow it off, or they actively attack you.

Imagine half of them don’t believe Christianity is a thing, and the other half believe you will burn in Hell for it.

Some are convinced you are going to aggressively recruit them, and verbally or physically attack you for even talking to them once they find out you are Christian.

Now extend it out further. The city council has voted in laws saying it is legal to discriminate against you because of who you are. You have committed no crime, but this existential part of your psyche is grounds to take away your rights.

People can legally declare self-defense if they attack you because your beliefs freak them out.

Extend this out further: your state legislature has passed laws saying that Christianity is an affront to their faith and an attack of civil society.

Your very existence is a blight on humanity. They are not only not going to censure your city level law makers, they are passing laws forbidding you from even taking the case to a civil or legal court.

Extend it out further: The national legislature is made up primarily of members of this majority religion. Some of them pay lip service to civil rights, but the rest actively work to codify the abuse you are receiving at the national level.

The Supreme Court, every member of which is this other religion, rules almost unanimously that there is no reason to protect your rights.

It’s your choice to believe in your God. They hold up the handful of Christians in the legislature as examples of why everything is perfectly fine.

Extend this out. The UN pays lip service to civil rights protections, but don’t really give a fuck. After all, they are all in the majority religion, or one of the larger groups.

The fact that it is unofficially, but effectively legal to kill you in the streets like a rabid dog is a primarily domestic issue.

Beyond that, your nation has veto power if the UN did decide to move.

There is a small ray of hope. There are obvious natural allies in the world, people who should understand your plight entirely. There are other Abrahamic religions who are also persecuted. They stand together with each other, and it would be expected that they should stand with you as well. Except they don’t most of the time.

Most of the time, members of these other two religions will pay lip service to having you around. They might even drag you from one party to another sometimes, to prove they have a Christian friend. When your back is against the wall though, they are just as freaked out by your Christianity as the members of the majority religion.

I know this sounds outlandish, but all I have really done is taken a description of the life of a member of the Trans community, and replaced them with religious labels and terms.

Even in places where great strides have been made for gay and lesbian men and women, trans people have been left in the dark. When they speak up, they are told by the LGB community that they are being selfish and asking for too much. I left off the T and the Q, because in this context the L and the G may as well be a bunch of cis straight dudes.

Try looking at the story through different eyes and see how different it looks.

Don’t look at everything from the perspective of the straight conservative Christian who is feeling insecure because someone has said their religion has caused harm to some minority.

Look at it for a moment through the eyes of a scared child, who belongs to a class of people who is a minority within the minority, whose very existence is treated as an abomination, and isn’t even allowed the strength that friends and family could provide.

Then ask if it is such a wild idea that she could have broken, that she could have found herself walking off into the darkness with no beacon to guide her home. The people who were responsible for holding the light up for her were the ones that took it away and left her to wander.

“Studies”

So,

About once a year we see “studies” released by research institutes that just happen to be run by religious organizations or conservative think tanks, that say that [Insert Minority Group A] tends to have a higher rate of suicide than those who are “normal.”

The one that sparked this response just happens to be a post saying that Atheists tend to have a higher suicide rate than Christians.

There is one factor that this willfully ignorant bastards consistently ignore when they interpret the “findings” from their “studies.”

Any time you have a group that is consistently physically and emotionally abused, ostracized, otherized, and treated in general as sub-human, you are going to have a higher rate of suicide.

Atheists, LGBT folk, Pagans, and other groups that the majority deems to be “unfavorable,” face very real persecution in this country.

And by persecution, I don’t just mean they get offended on a regular basis, or that their feelings get hurt. I mean that society looks the other way as they are attacked, physically and verbally. Society looks the other way as their homes and businesses are burned. There is an entire history of Atheists, and homosexuals being killed in the streets and the police shrugging it off and moving on. Just as often it happens in the back woods where their families aren’t even given the benefit of a proper funeral until their bodies are found months later.

For those in power who keep screaming “I’m being persecuted,” persecution is a real thing. And yes, persecution tends to lead people to be more inclined to do something stupid.

They do these “studies,” and point to them as evidence that whatever thing they find uncomfortable was obviously unholy and unnatural to begin with, while totally ignoring Human nature.

A person being an Atheist does not make them unstable or an abomination.
A person being gay does not make them unstable or an abomination.
A person being human does not make them unstable or an abomination.

A person being abused to the breaking point, being told that they are abominations, being told that they are un-American by their very existence, being kicked out of their homes, outcast by their families, abused by people that should be their friends, constantly in fear that they might be the next dead queer/witch/heathen in some assholes back pasture… THAT makes a person unstable.

This is Not Satire

Ok..

People need to learn what Satire is…

And no, in this case I am NOT talking about the people who spread satirical posts thinking they are real.

Dictionary.com defines satire like this:

1. the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.
2. a literary composition, in verse or prose, in which human folly and vice are held up to scorn, derision, or ridicule.
3. a literary genre comprising such compositions.

There is another aspect of satire that is quite often forgotten these days. Satire is honest. It is honest to the point of drawing blood. It is a look at society at a level that makes us uncomfortable, because it charges the status quo like a lance. I choose a lance, and not some other weapon for a reason. A lance risks its own destruction as it plunges into the armor of an enemy of equal or greater power. And they do all this in the light of day, where everyone can see their success, but also their failures.

Satire is commentary on the powerful. It is a direct attack on the status quo. It is meant to teach, to goad, to coerce.

Satirists mock, taunt, and deride the powerful and influential.

They target those who are in position to make policy, or who have the ear of those who make policy.

They make mock those who are in a place to right their position and make amends.

They go after those who have willfully put themselves in the wrong.

They do not make fun of the weak. They do not taunt and torment those bellow them. They do not bully those who cannot defend themselves or who cannot change that which they are targeting them for.

That is not satire, that nothing more than playground bullying taken before a wider audience.

Please, keep this in mind when you re-share links and images from “Satire” sites.

A few good examples:

The Onion: They are open and up front about what they are. They proudly announce that they are a satire site. And, while they skirt the boundaries on occasion, their targets are almost always those in power.

The Daily Currant: You have to dig, and dig hard to find that they are a satire site. No one is safe from their attacks, not even the innocent. As long as they can get a laugh, they don’t care if they actually have a message.

You may wonder what brought on this rant. The answer to that is simple. I have seen too many people posting utter bullshit, taken from sites that paint themselves up to be “news,” while attacking people who just don’t agree with them, with flat out lies, and calling it “satire.”

The direct trigger in this case is a flood of posts from a website called ChristWire (http://www.christwire.com/). Not only do they not have the site marked anywhere as a satire site, but they have multiple posts arguing that they are not satire.

The site pretends to be a news blog. It posts the most nonsensical stories possible, insisting that they are real news, with real facts, and real implications, and that the author of the articles is an Evangelical Christian.

Instead the blog is filled with “news” that is made up of fake “facts” about everything from claims that Pokemon is encouraging demon worship, to Obama is infecting Christians with Ebola. They back up their stories with references to fake news reports, “first-hand knowledge,” and badly done Photoshoped pictures.

They are presenting this as what the Rank and File Christian believes.

While they do have stories that deal somewhat with the day to day news, they are presented in the form of “This is the paranoid delusional idea that these people believe.”

They do not target the powerful. They do not target the influential or the famous. They target the rank and file Christian.

They paint a picture of idiocy and say “Look at the nonsense these people believe.”

That is not satire.

That is the sort of bullying that most of us were taught to avoid as children.

They are not attacking the leadership of any organization. They are not attacking the Vatican, or the SBC. They are attacking our neighbors, and using lies to do it.

Satire is about presenting the truth in a way to teach. Satirists choose to be the “fool,” not the bully.

These people are the thugs of the internet, and they hide behind the label of “satire” because they figure people are too dumb to get what they are doing.

Teaching Our Sons Not To Rape

Ok, I have seen a common theme popping up over the last several months about the issue of rape and how to address it.

There are those who are constantly saying “Women should protect themselves,” and those who are saying that “We should teach men not to rape.”

The first one has some relevance, but given the nature of the vast majority of rapes, it doesn’t have much bearing on reality.

The second one is vital to solving the problem. We as a society DO need to teach our sons (and daughters) not to rape. However, those who espouse this view are constantly shot down. The response from the opposition runs the gambit from vulgar language to threats of violence (I wish I was making this up).

People who say that men should take responsibility for their behavior are often called sluts, bitches, prudes, or if they are guys they are called gay, effeminate, etc. Ironically, I do not personally think that the accusations are near as insulting as the people making them seem to think.

Anyway, I am starting to ramble so I will get to the point.

As a guy who lives in the middle of a culture that takes just that route, that tells their young men and women not to rape each other, I can tell you this much: If fucking works.

The United States military, Navy and Marines especially perhaps, have had a long history of sexual assault and related problems. The most effective method that they have found so far, the one method that actually produced a drastic drop in the number of assaults and full out rapes, was teaching people what rape and sexual assault are, and insuring that they know it is wrong.

And to the assholes who are all like “Women should protect themselves because guys are going to do what guys do.” As a human male, you sicken me. You are shame to your species. You are basically saying that you and those like you are no better than rabid animals that function at a level no more elevated than that of a mollusk. Please, do the world a favor and don’t reproduce. We don’t need your ideas being passed on to future generations.

Not a Happy Read

Warning: This one is not written with friendly words.

There are a number of bumper stickers out there that are geared towards encouraging community, cooperation, unity, and peaceful coexistence. Probably one that everyone has seen simply says “Coexist” and the letters are made up of various religious and philosophical symbols, as well as a few LGBT symbols thrown in for good measure.

The message is simple, and it is obvious. We are all human. We are different, but we are human. We need to learn to deal with that.

And of course, as is inevitable, I have started seeing various opposed variations. Sad as that may sound, it is true.

I saw one earlier on the way home that offended the hell out of me. I am not prone to road rage, but I went ahead and got ahead of the guy just in case I changed my mind.

It said “Coexist?” except that the letters were made up of bombs, guns, and various jingoistic symbols. And then bellow that it said: “Ok Lefty, you first.”

It offended the fuck out of me. To be blunt, it is not intolerant to discourage hate. It is not intolerant to tell you not to go bomb and kill people because you don’t agree with their skin color or their religion. It is not intolerant to say that it is wrong for you to bully.

It also offended me greatly because the combination of the message and the symbols used caused one thought to stick in my head and refuse to budge…

People like that are the reason that people like me still die on a daily basis, even if they don’t make the news any more.

We still get periodic lists of names of sailors and soldiers who have been shot, blown up, run over, or just taken their own lives in the Middle East. So yeah, fuckheads like that offend the hell out of me.

You know what the real bitch of it is though? They are the ones screaming “Support our Troops!” any time they see someone even indicating that peace is a good idea.

Boy Scouts and a Fear of Change

Governor Perry, when speaking about the Boy Scouts of America and their policy on homosexuality, said that he did not feel that “Scouting is not a place where sexuality should be the intersextion of. Scouting is about teaching a substantial amount of life’s lessons. Sexuality is not one of them, it never has been and never should be.”

You know… The people on the “Pro-Gay” side agree. That is what we are fighting for. The difference is that Governor Perry needs to spend some time with a grammar book and a dictionary.

Currently, Boys Scouts of America policy makes sexuality an issue. It effectively teaches that a specific sexuality is the right one. This goes against what the Governer has said, even though he seemed to think he was supporting the current policy.

They BSA leadership has postponed their decision again. They know there is only really one right answer, but they are concerned about whether or not their organization will survive the change.

One individual (I am not sure who) was quoted as saying “I am not sure if scouting will survive this changing society.”

The problem is that if Scouting does not surive the change, then it wasn’t meant too. They need to learn from their sisters. The Girl Scouts do not care if you are gay or straight. They do not even care if you were born a biological girl. They got with the program decades ago.

They are even inclusive enough that they will embrace the sons of their scout leaders. They are often effectively part of the troop (they just can’t usually go to camp and such. After all they aren’t really girl scouts unless they identify as girls).

The BSA will have to make this change eventually, and I think they will be surprised at the results. Their senior leadership needs to grow up and move on with life and stop enforcing their homophobia on children.

Some Messages are Better Left Half Finished

This started out as a response to a facebook post, but then exploded into a thing of its own.

I have to say that this is a message that would be best served by posting only the first half of the words. I know that what I am about to say may not be popular, but as a military person who works to protect the Constitution, and the freedoms it provides, it becomes harder and harder for me not to speak up when people say things that are mean and angry and attribute it to the Constitution.

First off, I have never met a person that wanted to stop everyone from praying. There are those who want to see prayer and religion removed from a position of authority in public (i.e. governmental) situations, but they generally are ok with the idea of you praying at home. They are not anti-prayer, they are simply in favor of freedom of religion.

As for “Let’s take our country back,” back from who? People of Christian faith are the vast majority of lawmakers. They are the ones who have the most sway over the laws.

More importantly, saying “Let’s take our country back,” in this context is implying that you are more American than the next guy. It is saying that if someone disagrees with you they are obviously dangerous and radical. It is saying that somehow the country has been invaded and must be liberated.

As for “In God We Trust,” that is a very sound concept for families and groups that are Christian, or follow some other singular deity. It is not however part of the Constitution. It was added to our currency in response to the “Red Scare,” because the communist leaders of the day had some very unhealthy ideas about religion and those in power wanted to prove that America was not a communist country. The same goes for “Under God,” in the pledge of allegiance. “Under God” as added sixty two years after the pledge was written (Not only that, but according to WikiPedia, the guy that wrote the Pledge was a Christian Socialist).

We are a nation that has many Christians. They are by most accounts the vast majority of the people in our country. We are also a nation that was made great in part because we encourage diversity. When people make the claim that “Liberals are trying to take God out of government,” Well… To be honest, they are. But that is because God does not belong in government. Our founding fathers fled England for that very reason. This Nation was founded primarily for that reason. Yes, we are a nation of Christians, but we are not a Christian Nation. Yes, our laws often (but not always) match up with Christian morality, but that is because in most cases Christian morality matches Jewish Morality, matches Muslim morality, matches Pagan morality, and matches Buddhist morality. Certain things are right and wrong, and most people of most faiths agree with that.

The Church has a strong role in our country, and that role is to provide faith and support and compassion to their flocks. When the Church gets involved in government though, it generally does more harm than good. Many people who are Atheists today left the church because of the church’s public and legislative behavior. If you want to push anyone out of government, it should be the people who are CLAIMING to be Christian’s, and then pushing a hate filled agenda with all the passion and grace of a feral animal. Christians should not be uniting to “Take Back Our Country,” they should be uniting to take back their name from the bigots that present themselves to the world as representing the church and all that it means to be Christian.

As for the military, we do fight for your right to be Christian. We also fight for your neighbor’s right to be a Muslim, a Jew, a Buddhist, an Atheist, or whatever he wants to be.

We are also sworn to protect the Constitution, and I cannot stand by and let people defame it with their anger and hate. If you love God, you can say so. If you love the Constitution, you can say so. If you hate your neighbor, well… You can say that too. Please though, do not spout hate, and then claim it is you defending the Constitution our country or what it means to be American.

I mean, you can say those things. You do have freedom of speech, I would just rather you not lie to yourself or the world about what the Constitution says.

I would rather you not spread hate and bigotry at all, but if you choose too, please keep it away from the constitution, and please keep God/gods out of it.

Twenty Media Outlets say that Torture is Free Speach

Torture is not protected under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. In fact, it is not supported in any amendment.

The first amendment states:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

These words that we hold so dear where meant to have a few common sense obvious effects. They were intended to protect everyone’s right to worship or not worship as they please. Even though the phrase “One Nation Under God” appears often in American politics, you do not have to follow that god.

Secondly, they are intended to protect the rights of the common man to object to the behavior of his government in a very visible way without risk of backlash (in the case of protest), or in a more verbal but quieter way (in the case of petition).

Third, it protects the rights of the press to record and distribute information, even if that information is not comfortable for the people in power.

Our country was founded because the powers of the time did not practice these things. To insure that our new government did, they codified them in the very document that acts as the foundation of our Union.

It is this document that we look to in order to judge the validity of every law that is passed in our country. It is not a perfect document, but it is one that a lot of people have put a lot of thought into. This is why we have amendments to start with. To many people, the first amendment is the most important, for the reasons stated above.

Its sole purpose is to protect the little guy. More importantly, it is to protect the basic and natural behavior that can be expected of any rational human being when their rights are trod upon.

The entire document is primarily about protection of these very people. No where does it say that an outside entity has the right to torment, harass, and torture any citizen for any reason.
Enter Westboro Baptist Church. I do not normally speak like this of anyone, but they are a hate group that hides behind their “God,” and a twisted interpretation of the first amendment while they torture the families and loved ones of our nations fallen. I put “God” in parenthesis, because of all the various denominations of Christianity (of which they claim membership) that I have experienced, NONE of them worship a God that would condone the torture of people in his name.

Now that I have spoken in that manner, I should probably explain WHY I feel the way that I do. I am sure that there are those who have not heard of them.

These people do not picket companies. They do not picket government buildings or events. They do not stage independent rallies to share their views loudly with the world.

No, they crash funerals. They travel around the country, protesting funerals. They watch the news, and scour the air ways and internet for word that a fallen solder has come home for their final rest, and they put together a personalized protest just for him or her, complete with photographs of the fallen so that the families know that it IS about them.

They are fond of slogans like “God Hates Fags” (Yes, the URL above really does appear to be theirs), “Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” and “Thank God for IED’S.”

Their website (linked above) even has a schedule of events that they plan to picket in the near future. I have looked over the list, and on it they have three protests scheduled in the near future (one yesterday) for military funerals. Three are flat out anti-semetic. The rest are mostly either against other Christian groups, or Lady Gaga… No, that is not a joke.

Of the ones that are not military funerals, several of the others are targeting families not organizations.

They go around saying hateful, hurtful, angry things, and getting in the faces of people who THOUGHT they had gone through the worst that life could offer them. People who are already dealing with the loss of a son, a daughter, a husband, a brother, a wife… Suddenly they find themselves the focus of a terrorist attack, carried out by their fellow Americans!

I have been thinking about this for a while. I am an American Sailor. The idea of going to war is a little scary, but it is no where near as terrifying for me as the idea that if I were to die, my mother and father would likely be tortured by these people. While they are still working their way through the grief process, they could find themselves receiving messages that people were glad I was dead. “God hates Fags! God hates the military! I am glad your faggy son is dead.” That is the kind of things that these people are saying at these protests.

The constitution guarantees your right to stand outside of city hall and yell whatever the hell you want. Right or wrong, you can protest the local bank, or the health department, or whatever organization that has you pissed off this week. Fill out the paperwork, and get your permit. You are good to go.

The constitution does not however give you the right to be disruptive, and hateful, and threatening, and vulgar, while people are carrying out the single most solemn ceremony that exists in any faith.

When someone has died and their loved ones are laying them to rest they should be allowed a moment of piece. They are sure to have many sleepless and painful nights even without outside interference. When people are in pain, the proper response is not to intentionally make it worse.

What I have said may seem like common sense to a lot of people, but apparently not to everyone. The case of Snyder vs. Phelps is heading quickly towards the Supreme Court, and amicus briefs are being filed in support of both sides.

This is part of what finally convinced me to take the time to write a full blog entry on the subject.

In an article in Stars and Stripes, dated 18 July (It may have a different date stateside), they speak of 20 media groups that are siding with Westboro Baptist Church on the issue. It seems that they feel that psychological torture of individuals (individuals, not organizations) is protected under the first amendment. In the case of Snyder vs Phelps, they flew all the way from Kansas to Maryland to target a family. They could have just as easily made the same statement in ANY other situation, and I would not object. I do not agree with them. I think they are hate mongers and bigots, but they have a right to be.

However, I do not agree with the assertion that their right to be bigots allows them to attack people.

There is a blog entry (basically very similar to the printed paper article) at the Stars and Stripes site. They list the organizations there.

I can see the organizations worries, but they fail to see the difference between news coverage of an event, and personal attacks on individual citizens. They fail to realize that the issue here is nothing like a reporter covering a story. It is more like a mugger being told he did a good job, and was welcome to keep at it.

People have to know that there is a line between peaceful protest, and personal attacks.

It is late, and I am running out of steam, so I will leave off here. I know it is not often that I get two blog entries in the same month (or quarter for that matter), but some things have to be said. Some things just make your head want to explode.

This is one of those things.